Machines for the packaging of products by the simultaneous introduction of a product, especially a stack of blister packs, strip packs or the like, and brochures or leaflets like bipack tickets, into box-like containers erected from folded container blanks, can utilize an endless product-transport chain delivering the product to the packaging location, a continuous product-insertion chain provided with the mechanism for displacing the product into the container, and an endless container-transport chain, these chains having at least portions of their respective stretches which are parallel to one another and synchronized with one another.
The package-insertion chain can lie along a side of the product-transport chain opposite that along which the container transport chain is provided and can be equipped with means for shifting the product transversely to the chain travel direction into the container. Such means can include insertion rams which cannot only displace the product but also the brochures, leaflets or bipack tickets, hereinafter referred to as packaging inserts, into the container.
The machine can be provided with hold-down means which can be shiftable together with the insertion ram and can have slides controlled by cam-follower rollers engaging in closed cam tracks.
Apparatus of this type, wherein the product is delivered to the packaging location in cells of the product transport chain and in which the product and the product insert are transferred into respective containers in cells of the container-transport chain generally provide the two chains such that the cells can align and the transfer is effected cell by cell.
A typical apparatus of this type is described in DE 33 41 573 A1.
In the latter system, the hold-down tongues serve to press the product downwardly prior to the shifting of the product into the boxes by pressing on the product from above to maintain the shape of the product and to prevent detrimental deformation of the product during the product insertion process.
The hold-down plungers themselves are provided on slides which can be connected together to form an independent endless chain which can be driven in addition to the chains mentioned above at least partially above the common portion of the pass of the other chains at which the product-transport chain, the container-transport chain and the insertion chain are juxtaposed and synchronously moved. The slides are so provided that the hold-down tongues can be lowered onto the product before the latter is shoved into the container.
The drawback of this system is that the product-transport chain and the chain formed from the sliders of the hold-down tongues must be accurately synchronized since even small travel differences between these chains can result in offsetting between the carriages and the sliders and result in interference with the product-insertion process. In addition, problems arise with respect to the insertion of products of different dimensions since it is either not possible to alter the sizes accommodated by the machines with such apparatus or the alteration of the apparatus for different product sizes is difficult or complex because the slider-forming chain must be adjusted as an entity without interfering with the synchronization between this chain and the other chains.